I have friends and family who want to keep up with me and in touch, so I created this blog as a way for me to tell them all the news and stories they want to hear, and on their own time. I also hope to give others an understanding of what it means to serve in the IDF and the service those who do serve are doing.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Before you read the following post please keep in mind there is no racist intent only an attempt at accurately depicting the situation on the ground. Thanks.

A common stereotype of Jews has been the dirty Jew; well I would like to clarify this error. It is the other half of the Semites which is dirty, and by dirty I mean downright disgusting. Pick an Arab village, anyone and go in. The first thing you notice before even entering is the garbage already littered outside. Trash bags, grocery bags, shopping bags, and we are probably lucky no to find body bags, but by the smell there has been one there for a while. As you enter the first line of houses you see the amount of garbage grow exponentially. There are now smashed cans, bottles, paper products of all kinds, and god knows what floating around. The coating can be so thick you can’t see the floor or grass anymore.

The smell is at times insufferable. People live with sheds stuffed with animals right next to the house, and at times the animals are in the house too. The stench attaches its self to the people too; when you meet them outside their village the stink follows them. I kid you not when I say even blindfolded I could tell who lives in the village just by the smell. The worst of the smell comes from the burning of their garbage. The smell is that of all things putrid mixed with the horrid stench of smoke, and not any smoke but the smoke of any all things chemical and cancerous. This smell at times can bring ones stomach to want to expel all its contents.

The worst smell though is the copper scrap yards. These illegal scrap yards located in village centers, capitalize on the high value there is on copper and the difficulty to recycling it from old appliances and air conditioning units. They strip all the wiring from the units, most of it covered in rubbers and plastics and burn it releasing all the chemicals, a horrid cancerous stench, and in the end masses of copper they can sell for a nice profit. The supposed fine for this act is 50,000 shekel, but who is going to give it to them? The PA will not, and we do not have the time or resources to deal with this, so all suffer from another smelly Arab enterprise. The Arabs really do what they want in Judea and Samaria most of the time.

The great comparison one must make here is between the settlements. A Jewish one is easy to spot, it’s clean, orderly with a set layout usually in straight lines, and fenced in most of the time. Arab villages are just like I described till now, dirty, smelly, and disorganized with people building whatever, wherever, however they want where they want. Even a simple look at an aerial photograph lets one see the stark difference.

As for why the Arabs live this way let me rule out some “possibilities.” Some people like to try and blame us the Jews, who else really? They say the Arabs refuse to take services from the Israeli’s, yet trash collection in all the villages here is done by the Palestinian Authority. They don’t want their own people to collecting the trash? Who will then the French? If this trash/smell problem was only in a few locations one might be able to claim it’s a problem in those areas, but this problem exists also in Wadi Ara, a long stretch of Israeli-Arab villages in the lower Galil. This problem exists in Eastern Jerusalem where the Jewish quarter is clean and orderly and the Arabs have trash piled stories high under signs saying “please do not dump garbage here.” Seen it with my own eyes. Then you have all of the villages in our areas as well. I leave conclusions to you; I merely point out Israel is not at fault and this is a systemic problem pointing to an internal systemic problem. Frankly my objection today to the peace process is Greenpeace. How could we entrust to anyone land we know they are going to trash and pollute. Pity the land for god’s sake! (No pun intended). Oh and before you yell Dirty Jew please take a whiff of yourself first.